His excursuses on Rome’s literary and oratorical lights, something entirely missing in Livy, similarly foster a sense of progression and continuity.38 Velleius focuses first on characters from the middle Republic (2.9), then on the late Republic and the Augustan period (2.36.2). A reckoning of the deceased writers of the latter period, he imagines, is ‘‘foolish’’ because they are practically in front of our very eyes ( paene stulta est inhaerentium oculis ingeniorum enumeratio
. . .
, 2.36.3; cf. 2.126.1). Roman literary culture is envisioned as a visible plane, with recent writers more readily in sight, earlier writers off in the distance. . .
but the plane they inhabit is the same. 39 Velleius brings this survey down to the present, yet admits that while he admires living writers (vivorum. . .
magna admiratio), a list is too difficult to concoct (2.36.3). The Roman literary tradition is therefore seen to be a relatively unbroken affair, mirroring the political tradition as well.40If it is Velleius’ wish to convince his readers that there is no serious ‘‘break’’ between Republic and Principate – indeed, that the Principate is merely a ‘‘restored’’ Republic – what better way to assert that continua- tion than to argue that the man most closely identified with the Republic, the man who was killed in order to make way for the Principate, is in fact still alive?
‘‘Relics of Cicero’’
Syme maintained that ‘‘[o]nly a robust faith can discover authentic relics of Cicero in the Republic of Augustus.’’41However, this is perhaps not as true for the Tiberian period as it was for the Augustan. Seneca the Elder,
38
Discussion of these excursuses in Schmitzer (2000),72 – 100; Kuntze (1985),244 – 53; Hellegouarc’h (1984), 430 – 2. Schmitzer (2000), 73, offers Livy’s excursus on the srcins of satire at 7.2.3 – 7 as a parallel, but Livy focuses on details of the genre rather than on its practitioners.
39
Compare the view expressed at2.92.5, where the ‘‘present’’ is something we ‘‘see’’ (and which ‘‘overwhelms’’ us), the ‘‘past’’ something we ‘‘hear’’ (and which ‘‘instructs’’ us). 40
Schmitzer (2000), esp. pp. 86 – 7, nicely elucidates the way Velleius ties the political to the cultural.
41
Syme (1939), 321; on Cicero’s general reputation in the imperial period, Pierini (2003).
for instance, devotes Suasoriae6 and7 (together with the Controversiae, a product of the late30s) to Cicero. And it is through Cicero that Velleius attempts to bridge or even mask the transition from Republic to Empire or Principate. For a loyalist such as Velleius, narrating the triumviral career of the first emperor was an especially tricky business, particularly when it came to the proscription and murder of Cicero. He could scarcely avoid it, yet it is apparent that for Velleius, and for many other Romans, the manner of Cicero’s death was a source of genuine anxiety. Here is a relic indeed.
Proscribed by the triumvirs in November of 43, Cicero was hunted down at his villa in Caieta, torn from his litter, his head and hands cut off and carried to Rome to be displayed on a pole in the Forum.42Despite the fact that this had occurred some seventy or so years before Velleius wrote his history, the memory of that event remained very much alive, and, as we know from Seneca the Elder, was kept alive in thesuasoriaepracticed in the rhetorical schools.43 But it was a memory that had been carefully manipulated, as one can see from Velleius’ outburst on the murder:
Furente deinde Antonio simulque Lepido, quorum uterque, ut praediximus, hostes iudicati erant, cum ambo mallent sibi nuntiare quid passi essent quam quid emeruissent, repugnante Caesare sed frustra adversus duos, instauratum Sullani exempli malum, proscrip- tio. nihil tam indignum illo tempore fuit quam quod aut Caesar aliquem proscribere coactus est aut ab ullo Cicero proscriptus est; abscisaque scelere Antonii vox publica est, cum eius salutem nemo defendisset qui per tot annos et publicam civitatis et privatam civium defenderat. nihil tamen egisti, M. Antoni (cogit enim excedere pro- positi formam operis erumpens animo ac pectore indignatio), nihil inquam egisti mercedem caelestissimi oris et clarissimi capitis abscisi numerando auctoramentoque funebri ad conservatoris quondam rei publicae tantique consulis incitando necem. rapuisti tu M. Ciceroni lucem sollicitam et aetatem senilem et vitam miseriorem te principe quam sub te triumviro mortem, famam vero gloriamque factorum
42
App. BC 4.19 – 20; Dio 47.8; Plu. Cic.47 – 9. 43
For a survey and analysis of the tradition surrounding Cicero’s death, Wright (2001); Noe ` (1984), 44 – 77. On the declamatory tradition in particular, Roller (1997).
atque dictorum adeo non abstulisti ut auxeris. vivit vivetque per omnem saeculorum memoriam, dumque hoc vel forte vel providentia vel utcumque constitutum rerum naturae corpus, quod ille paene solus Romanorum animo vidit, ingenio complexus est, eloquentia inlumina- vit, manebit incolume, comitem aevi sui laudem Ciceronis trahet, omnisque posteritas illius in te scripta mirabitur, tuum in eum factum execrabitur, citiusque e mundo genus hominum quam ***
cedet. Then in a fit of madness Antony and Lepidus (each of whom, as we have said, had been declared public enemies), revived the vile practice that srcinated under Sulla, proscription. Both evidently preferred to make public what they had suffered rather than the punishment they deserved. Caesar resisted, but in vain against these two. Nothing was so shameful at that time as the fact that Caesar was coerced into proscrib- ing someone or that Cicero was proscribed by anyone. The voice of the people was destroyed by Antony’s wickedness, since no one defended the safety of the person who for so many years had defended both the public security of the state as well as the private well being of its citizens. Nonetheless, Mark Antony, you achieved nothing – the sheer indigna- tion that bursts forth from my mind and my heart forces me to exceed the scope of my planned work – you achieved nothing, I say, by offering a reward for the destruction of that divine voice and famous head and by goading people with deadly compensation to murder a man who was once the savior of the Republic and a great consul. You stole from Marcus Cicero some anxious time, his old age, a life that, seeing that you were in charge and a triumvir, would have been more wretched than death. Yet you did not so much rob him of the fame and glory of his deeds and his words but rather you increased them. He lives and he will live in memory for all eternity, and provided that this body of the nature of things embraces him – whether that body be consti- tuted by chance, providence, or however, and which Cicero alone of almost all Romans saw in his mind and in his intellect and illumined with his eloquence – it will remain intact and have as its companion for as long as it survives the renown of Cicero. All posterity will marvel at Cicero’s writings against you, it will decry your treatment of him, and more swiftly will humankind depart from this world than <Marcus
Cicero>. (2.66.1 – 5)
Here, Octavian – the future Augustus – is excused; blame for the brutal- ity of the deed laid entirely at the feet of Mark Antony, who he claims was motivated by sheer spite. Other, less partisan sources assert Octavian’s complicity.
I would draw particular attention to the manner in which Velleius formulates this passage. Woodman astutely notes that it takes the form of a consolatio, but at least part of the passage strikes the tone of a
Philippic. In apparent homage to Cicero’s scathing attacks on Antony, Velleius scolds Antony as though he were in fact alive, abusing him in much the same sort of language Cicero used and even lifting a phrase or two from Cicero.44 This phenomenon – treating and even addressing historical characters as though they were still alive – will receive further discussion below in connection with Valerius Maximus as well as Seneca, both of whom use the device, though this is perhaps the most striking example.
45
The argument, odd though it may seem (despite being quite conventional), is that Cicero is not really dead. Memory will sustain him and continue to give him life: vivit vivetque per omnem saeculorum mem- oriam, ‘‘he lives and he will live in memory for all eternity.’’46Substitute ‘‘Republic’’ (res publica) for ‘‘Cicero’’ (thevox publica, in Velleius’ words) – not a far-fetched exercise, given Cicero’s identification with the Republic – and one grasps the implications.
Also remarkable is the sheer sense of personal indignation. Why, one might imagine, should an imperial writer like Velleius be so vehement in his defense of the man who fought for the Republic? Of course the problem disappears if you believe that the Republic is in fact not dead.
44
Woodman ( 1983) on 2.66passim. 45
Cf. 2.41.1, where Julius Caesar ‘‘grabs the pen’’ of Velleius Paterculus and forces him to write more slowly ( scribenti manum inicit et quamlibet festinantem in se morari cogit).
46
Pliny the Younger picks up on this phrase in his discussion of the death of Verginius Rufus: Vivet enim vivetque semper, atque etiam latius in memoria hominum et sermone versabitur, postquam ab oculis recessit(Ep.2.1.11); and indeed, Pliny relates to the deceased as though he were alive (Verginium cogito, Verginium video, Verginium iam vanis imaginibus, recentibus tamen, audio adloquor teneo (ibid. 12). For Velleius fame and good deeds ensure a sort of continued life after death: cf. his remark about the death of Metellus at1.11.7: hoc est nimirum magis feliciter de vita migrare quam mori . For the conventionality of the idea – and the possibility that Velleius at2.66.5 imitates Cicero himself at Marc.28 – Woodman (1983) ad loc.
What he has cleverly managed to do is get around a very sticky problem. As I have suggested, the event could hardly be ignored, but nor could he follow the tradition that made Octavian a willing if not enthusiastic collaborator in the murder of the Republic’s staunchest defender. So he perverts history just a bit, blaming An tony, exonerating the future emperor, expressing deep sympathy for Cicero. In so doing he perpe- tuates a very particularized memory of Cicero, as a man to be remem- bered as the victim of another man bent on personal domination (Antony), as a man who had done and said many unspecified memorable things, but above all as a man famed for his eloquence. 47 But he was assuredly not to be remembered as a man whose political or philosophi- cal views should be emulated or even studied.48That, after all, was why he had been killed, as a more forthright historian could have told you. But that piece of information is excised from Velleius’ memory of Cicero.
In a sense, then, Velleius has striven to restore some measure of dignity if not relevance to Cicero by memorializing him in this fashion. But if, as I have suggested, his outburst on Cicero reinforces the notion that the Republic continues, that just as Cicero ‘‘lives’’ so too does the Republic live, at the same time his special pleading highlights the damage the Caesarian and triumviral periods were felt to have inflicted on the Republic; the need to argue for Cicero’s continuing influence and the continuity of the Republic must imply that there were those who believed just the opposite, that with the death of Cicero so too died the Republic.
While we should not dismiss Velleius’ views about the ‘‘Tiberian Republic’’ as insincere or contrived, it is nonetheless evident that in writing his history, and especially of (what we call) the late Republic, he recognized the desirability of presenting a memory that made the Republic seem politi- cally close to the state overseen by Tiberius and respected its traditions and icons. This urge to sculpt memory, so apparent in his handling of Cicero’s death, is equally on display in Valerius Maximus. Yet as we shall see, while he shares with Velleius similar views about the continuity of the Republic under Tiberius, Valerius comes to that conclusion by a different route.
47
Velleius’ respect for Cicero is evident elsewhere as well: cf.2.34.3 – 4,45.2 – 3. Cf. Val. Max. on Cicero’s death at 5.3.4, with Bloomer (1992),203 – 4.
48
Pace Schmitzer (2000),188, who suggests that Cicero’s interest in concordia found an ally in Tiberius, thus explaining in part Velleius’ favorable portrait of the orator.